Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, departmental officials, for being here today. Already it has been a very interesting meeting. I really appreciate your time. I'm sure it takes quite a bit to prepare for these appearances, so thank you for that too.
I wanted to ask about women on boards in particular and what Status of Women Canada is doing in this area. Canadian women have high levels of education and business experience and represent more than 50% of university graduates, but female CEOs lead just 2% of the world's largest companies and are represented only on 10% of boards.
We are all aware that this is an issue and it's sometimes hard to reconcile that fact with the fact that there are so many women entrepreneurs who lead successful businesses and are active in so many areas of community life but for some reason are consistently under-represented on boards.
The minister in the first hour mentioned the WEConnect Canada organization. I had the pleasure of attending their conference in Toronto a few weeks ago. I met a number of successful women entrepreneurs and took part in a panel with representatives and people who have benefited from the expertise of an organization like WEConnect Canada. First of all, let me congratulate Status of Women Canada and the minister in her absence for funding this organization, because I do believe that we have to have mentoring programs and training grounds for women so that they have the qualifications to serve on these corporate boards.
You are probably aware that some governments in some countries around the world have tried the quota system for solving this problem. I can understand where that comes from, where the desire to fix the problem quickly comes from, because it just seems fundamentally unjust, right? How can this be? Women are obviously qualified to do this, so why are the numbers so low?
Models like the one in Norway, Women on Boards, seem to have largely backfired. I'm hoping to be reassured that our model for getting more women to serve on corporate boards is better. I'm also hoping that you can reassure me that we have a plan. My colleague from Calgary Centre told me about a recent study. It came out yesterday and will be published in the Journal of Corporate Finance. Professor Li from the University of British Columbia released a study that shows that when there are women on corporate boards, they are more successful in mergers and acquisitions. I read a little bit about the study and found that they are attributing it to the fact that sociological studies show that women don't overestimate their abilities as much as men do—sorry about that, Terence—and that people on corporate boards are confident and self-aware, but women in particular are more cautious.
I thought that was pertinent to the conversation. I'll stop talking so you can tell me what Status of Women Canada is doing about the issue of the representation of women on boards.